Second-Chance Hero

by Justine Davis

  Of course, that could be because he was distracted by the sight of her. She’d cut her hair, and the short, wispy, windswept dark locks suited her. And bared a neck he’d never realized was so long and graceful. She was thinner after her ordeal, but when she pulled off her sunglasses, her blue eyes were just as blazingly bright and alive as they’d been when he’d uncovered her in that mound of debris.

  He hadn’t been at all surprised when Josh had sent the order for all available Redstone personnel in the country to respond to the small town struck hardest by the earthquake. He hadn’t been surprised when he arrived to find most of them, knowing their boss, were already on their way anyway. Nor had he been surprised when they refused to give up, digging through collapsed buildings, scouring every damaged structure in the gradually fading hope that someone else, anyone else, would be found alive.

  He had been surprised to find someone alive. They’d been on the verge of turning loose the cadaver dogs when one of the searchers had sent up a shout of discovery.

  He stopped the recollection with the discipline of years of training. Despite his long, hard history there were not many things John Draven dodged—or that gave him nightmares—but the memories of this woman, and what had happened to her, were at the top of his short list.

  When she was close enough that he could see her expression, he realized she was startled to see him. I know the feeling, he thought. He wasn’t, however, startled by her reaction. He was certain he was the last person on earth Grace O’Conner wanted to see again. Ever.

  When they were face-to-face, she didn’t speak. She just stared at him in a way that told him she was remembering, probably too clearly, their first encounter. He couldn’t blame her for the look in her eyes, for the pain he saw there. He could understand the horror that was reflected in the blue depths.

  What he couldn’t explain was the feeling in his gut, that kicked by a mule feeling he’d once experienced in the literal sense.

  “Grace,” he said, not sure if he meant her name or the demeanor she’d exhibited under the most horrendous conditions.

  “Mr. Draven,” she answered, and he was amazed at how the formality stung.

  Quickly he quashed the feeling, and took her lead. “You weren’t expecting me,” he said, his tone as formal as hers had been.

  “No.”

  The terseness of her response gave him his answer. She wanted nothing to do with him—and he couldn’t blame her.

  “I will stay out of your way as much as possible. I’ll be gone as soon as the situation here is resolved. Can you tolerate that?”

  For a moment he thought he saw puzzlement furrow her brow. But it was gone before he could be sure, and she spoke briskly. “I can tolerate anything that enables me to get my job done.”

  He nodded. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Then let’s get going. You have a saboteur to find, I have an airstrip to build.”

  He noticed the tautness of her muscles as she lifted an arm to put her sunglasses back on. She turned with seeming ease on the rough gravel surface of the graded area, and he wondered if she was trying extra hard to show no sign of her changed body. Of course, he’d never seen her before the earthquake, so he had no way of knowing. The only thing he’d been aware of was that she did damn fine work, all of which he’d seen after the fact.

  Get back on task here, Draven, he muttered to himself.

  He started after her, since she appeared to be heading for the construction trailer, his own destination. He ordered himself not to watch her walking ahead of him, but then decided it wouldn’t hurt, that he could give Ian a firsthand report on how one of his inventions was working under real live conditions, something the brilliant inventor—and husband of one of Draven’s own top operatives—might appreciate.

  Suddenly Grace stopped and turned around. For a split second he thought she might have been aware of his gaze on her, or perhaps just checking to see if he was looking. As any red-blooded male would. He guessed, despite recent events, he must still qualify, because he had to admit he’d been enjoying the view. She was wearing black jeans and a vivid blue tank top in the Belizean warmth. They weren’t snug, but nothing could disguise the feminine curves.

  “Are you here officially?”

  It took him a moment to process, and once more he had the thought that he was not functioning at full capacity. “Officially?”

  “Do you want the crews to know you’re here?”

  “You haven’t told anyone?”

  “No. I thought you might want to get the lay of the land first. Our local guy quit, after the last incident, so they know Redstone security will be coming. But that’s all. They didn’t know it would be John Draven.”

  She said it as if the announcement of his name alone would solve the situation. Which, on occasion, it had.

  “Let’s keep it that way for a while. I’m just the security guy they were expecting,” he said. He took out a card, scribbled his cell number on it and handed it to her. “If anything happens when I’m not around,” he explained, then asked, “what are the chances someone on the inside is involved?”

  He liked that her response wasn’t immediate but thoughtful.

  “Slim. Very. Most of these people have worked for Redstone, and some of those for me, on several projects. But I never say never.”

  Cautious. He liked that, too. She wasn’t blind. Redstone hired the best, let them do what they were hired to do, backed them up and paid them what they deserved, earning the kind of loyalty mere money couldn’t buy. It was the foundation of the Redstone empire, and anyone who worked there long enough not only came to believe it, but live by it.

  But every now and then a bad apple slipped through.

  There had been some recently, and it had put everyone more on their guard. He wondered if, even tucked away in the hospital, she knew that, and that was why she was wary, or if it was just a natural trait. Not that it mattered, he told himself, as long as she was.

  “Do you have any questions?”

  She stopped and looked over her shoulder at him. “I figure you know what you’re doing, or you wouldn’t have the reputation you have. I’ll just follow your lead.”

  Grace O’Conner left him standing there, and vanished into the trailer.

  “Don’t call me that!”

  Draven’s brow twitched, his only visible reaction to the young girl’s angry tone and mutinous expression. He’d run into her on his first recon of the site, and had known immediately who she was.

  “How’d you know my name anyway? And who I am?”

  She had Grace’s eyes, he thought. Her hair was a medium-brown rather than Grace’s gleaming sable, and she moved with that gawkiness of adolescence rather than Grace’s easy…well, grace, he thought, but the eyes were definitely the same deep blue.

  “It’s the name on your passport,” he said mildly.

  He’d seen a copy of the document in the files he’d gone over during the flight. And it was a good thing he’d guessed she was the only child on the project; she certainly didn’t look anything like the smiling, cheerful child in the passport photograph. Usually it was the other way around, and it was the photo that was stiff and stern looking.

  “I don’t care what that thing says.” She folded her arms across her chest in a message even someone who’d never heard of body language could read. “I hate that name and I won’t answer to it.”

  “Something wrong with Marilyn?”

  The girl gave an ungracious snort and rolled her eyes. “It’s bad enough my mother got named after some fairy-tale-type princess, why did she listen to my grandmother’s suggestion and stick me with the name of an old-time actress who killed herself?”

  “I see.”

  He didn’t, really. He didn’t see or know anything about kids her age. Especially girls. They were a foreign species to him. But if she was a typical example, he was amazed any teenager survived to adulthood without being killed by their parents. His own parents had given
up on him fairly early, but he’d long ago realized he probably deserved it. He’d been out of control. He’d needed more regimentation than his rather free-spirited parents had been able to provide. They’d been horrified when he’d joined the army, proud but still puzzled when he’d become a ranger, but in the end, even they had admitted it had been the saving of him.

  “Ms. O’Conner, then? Or should I just say, hey, you?”

  “I don’t use that, either!”

  He was striking out, it seemed. Which didn’t surprise him, given that the only teenager he’d ever dealt with had been his cousin, who had suffered a serious case of hero-worship for the ten-years-older cousin who came home in a uniform.

  “Just because my mother—” she emphasized the word with an anger that startled him “—dumped my father and his name, doesn’t mean I will. I’m more loyal than that. I hate being here instead of at home with my friends, and I hate her!”

  Ah. Apparently sabotage wasn’t the only problem Grace was dealing with.

  “‘Hey, you, it is, then.’” Tired of the sparring, he turned to go. To his surprise, she called out, in a tone that seemed almost apologetic.

  “I’m Marly. Marly Palmer.”

  He looked back over his shoulder. He gave her a slight nod, but added, “If your mother approves.”

  As easily as that the anger was back. “Everything’s always subject to her royal approval.”

  “It’s in the mother job description.”

  She scowled at him.

  “And I don’t envy her the job,” he muttered, and turned away again.

  He resisted the urge to look back at her, then wondered why he’d felt the urge at all. But he couldn’t resist the idea that formed in his mind.

  Did Grace’s daughter want to go home so badly she’d resort to sabotage?

  Chapter 3

  Draven came awake instantly at the sound of what had to be at least a 500 horsepower Caterpillar motor. With that innate sense of time he’d always had, he knew he’d only been asleep an hour or so, which would put it at about midnight. Midnight, and someone had fired up a piece of equipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. A piece of equipment that could likely do hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of damage.

  He rolled to his feet from his bedroll on the construction trailer floor. In a split second he had pulled on the slip-on boots he’d long ago gone to for just this reason, and was running. He’d already planned his route to various areas of the project, in case he had to do just this, respond in a hurry and silently.

  He got within sight of the chain-link equipment enclosure just in time to see a huge piece of machinery, with a couple of fits and starts, roll through the open gate. Whatever it was, it was at least ten feet tall and thirty feet long, with a large set of wheels in front and a smaller set trailing the body in back.

  Hunkered in the shadow of a wheeled bulldozer, he couldn’t see into the elevated glass cab of the machine, although whoever was handling it seemed to have smoothed things out. He started to stand when he caught a movement on the ground from the corner of his eye.

  There were two of them.

  He reached for the gun at the small of his back and drew it out. He hadn’t bothered to unclip the holster, since he wanted the weapon close at hand. Besides, he was used to sleeping with it. Or rather, dozing with it, since it also served the purpose of keeping him from getting too comfortable when he needed to be on guard. He held the lightweight Glock in his left hand. He and, at his insistence, all his people, were as skilled as possible with either hand.

  Then something about the man on the ground caught his attention. He was wearing a hard hat.

  Draven thought fast. What were the chances somebody from the outside bent on mischief would bring or risk stealing a hard hat? Or even think about it? For that matter, did their saboteur really think no one would notice what he—or they—were doing, starting up a machine that could be heard for hundreds of yards down the beach?

  Unless they were complete idiots, they’d know the people on the site would be on guard by now. And while he couldn’t discount the idiotic possibility, his gut was telling him something else was going on here. Especially since the machine was now moving smoothly, driven by someone with experience. Not that one of the people living on the cay couldn’t know how to run the thing, but still…

  The man on the ground moved, turned slightly as he watched the big machine roll by. And when he saw the profile Draven relaxed slightly, enough to slip the handgun back in the holster. It was foreman Nick Dwyer. Draven recognized him from the file he’d studied on the plane. He’d worked for Redstone for nearly two decades, and he was near the bottom of Draven’s suspect list, and only on it at all because he had access to every part of the project.

  Draven started walking, openly now. Over the noise of the big diesel Nick didn’t hear him approach, so when he spoke the man jerked slightly in surprise.

  “A little midnight work?”

  “Oh! Oh, no, it’s just…Ms. O’Conner.”

  Draven blinked. “What?”

  Nick gestured at the machine. “She just wanted to see if she could still do it.” He studied Draven for a moment. “She lost her right foot, you know. That bad earthquake in Turkey.”

  “I know.” He didn’t tell Nick he’d been there. He didn’t tell anyone. It was the only job he’d ever tried to keep secret.

  The man nodded. “She was very good on the loader, the compactors—well, on most of the rigs—before, but she hasn’t had the chance to try since she got that new mechanical foot thing. She didn’t want to try it in front of the whole crew, just in case.” The man glanced at the moving machine and grinned. “But I’d say she’ll do just fine.”

  Draven stared at the huge, yellow machine, trying to picture Grace at the controls. It was difficult if he thought only about her size and beauty, but if he remembered the toughness that had gotten her through three days buried alive, and the determination that had hurried her through rehab and back to work, it was easier.

  “She’s always done that?” he asked, nodding toward the machine.

  “Every project I’ve been on with her,” Nick replied. “She says she doesn’t like ordering others to do things she can’t or won’t do herself.”

  “Fits,” Draven said.

  “Redstone? Yeah, she does. Mr. Josh got a good one there.”

  He’d meant more than just Redstone, meant that it fit with what he knew of her personally, but he didn’t elaborate. It was clear the man already had a great deal of respect for Grace, and Draven suspected he’d find the same reaction among most people she supervised or worked for or beside.

  He tried not to think about the emotions that must have been churning in her before she’d tried this, afraid Ian’s miracle might not help her get this far.

  But it had, and at that moment he thought he heard a yelp of joy over the sound of the humming diesel.

  Grace woke up just before five, trembling. She hadn’t had the dream in weeks, hadn’t had the suffocating sensation jolt her awake, but it had returned last night. It wasn’t hard to figure out why; the appearance of John Draven explained many things, including the recurrence of her nightmare.

  Now if she could just explain the sudden leaping of her heart that seemed to occur every time she saw him. Earlier, during her self-imposed driving test, she had been able to write her reaction off to excitement at how well her new foot worked, at how quickly Ian Gamble’s invention had adapted, in only a few minutes learning what feedback she needed to control the grader.

  When she had whooped in victory and turned to raise a triumphant fist to Nick, and seen John Draven’s unmistakable tall, lean figure standing there, she’d been startled, that’s all. She hadn’t known he was still on-site, had assumed he’d gone for the night.

  But that didn’t explain why she was relieved that he left before she turned the grader around and brought it back.

  “Seems like a nice guy,” was all Nick said when
she asked if that had been the security man, just to make sure she hadn’t been way off in her certainty about who had joined him.

  But now she’d been revisited by the nightmare she’d hoped gone forever, although the Redstone counselor had warned her some form of it would likely be with her for a very long time. Draven’s presence was obviously dragging up those quashed memories, and she knew from long, sad experience that there would be no going back to sleep for a while.

  She sat up and swung her legs over the side of the queen-size bed. She still wasn’t quite used to the layout of the big, almost luxurious RV Redstone had set up for her use, so she turned on the low-wattage night-light.

  The bedroom in the rear of the converted bus was spacious, with a slide out that did away with any feeling of being cramped. Marly had tried to negotiate for the bedroom for herself, wanting privacy with typical teenage urgency. Grace had agreed easily, with the proviso that since the bedroom had the only shower Marly mustn’t complain about being awakened when her mother had to use it before dawn. That had quickly changed the girl’s mind.

  Now Grace was wishing she’d left well enough alone and let the girl have the room uncontested. Right now her daughter was using the foldaway bed up front, and while it was quite comfortable, it also had access to the outside door, and with Marly in her current frame of mind Grace wasn’t too happy about the idea that the girl could sneak out and she’d never know.

  With a sigh over the travails of single-parenting a teenage girl, Grace reached down and massaged the stub of her lower leg. It needed to toughen up more; even though she assiduously followed the doctor’s instructions on keeping it dry and protected, just the nature of her work stressed flesh and machine to the max. Bless Ian Gamble for thinking about comfort as well as his amazing programming and biofeedback chip; she knew she would never have come as far as she had without the extra thought he’d given to all aspects. A true Redstone man, she thought, and gave thanks once more to Josh Redstone for seeing the brilliance beneath the absentminded professor exterior.